Monthly Archives: February 2018

I have to admit… I have been fuming since hearing the most ignorant comment on TV a couple of weeks ago about God that I have ever heard. You know the one, the comment comparing hearing from Jesus to mental illness. Speaking to God is OK according to the talk show, but hearing from God is a mental illness.

Beautiful Colorado Sunset

First of all, God is in no need of hearing from us. Our words and prayers He has already known from eternity and the Painter of Sunsets and the Creator of Everything is never unprepared. It is we who are in need of hearing from Him, Who was and is and is to come. He is our God, our King, our Teacher and also the Great Father to whom we cry out Abba Father. What good would earthly fathers be who only listen to their children without answering, without teaching, without providing guidance and earthly sustenance ?

In fact though, the Hollywood elites do not want to hear from God. They use their high places in society to pile up monuments to ignorance with their flapping gums at the feet of their dead gods whom they know can neither see nor hear, and are especially unable to respond to their foolish words and evil deeds.

People of true spiritual knowledge know that God does not often cross the Divide to speak to us directly. He has provided in advance all we need to know in the Bible, which we refer to as the Word of God. It is written, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”. And also, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” . We know that God, Jesus and the Word are all one, inseparable and invaluable to the success of a society.

Those with wisdom and understanding know to diligently study that Word so that when we pray for His will, His words that are already inscribed in our hearts can be called upon at the right moment to give us answers about the right thing to do and say. I submit that there would be far less mental illness if people would turn to the Word of God and away from the incessant chatter of the ignorant.

OK, so I know this is a picture of a coyote… But perhaps the reason for that is because wolves in Colorado were hunted to extinction a long time ago and Yellowstone is a long way from Cripple Creek Colorado 😦

Coyote in the Colorado winter landscape

But I just want to throw this out there, if wolves can thrive in Yellowstone, why could they not thrive just as well in Rocky Mountain National Park? Both are huge tracts of rugged land mostly inaccessible to people, both good habitat for wolves. Every year I have to hear the state wildlife people whine that there are too many elk in Rocky, basically they have no competition. The elk there just lay around all the time, sometimes causing traffic jams on the highways and sometimes just wandering into town to hang out with the tourists.

I have read accounts of how wolves have entirely renovated the landscape in Yellowstone once they began to thrive in significant numbers. The elk and deer herds became stronger as the animals were forced to move around and the wolves culled the weaker members. Aspen trees are healthier, forest grasses taller, and because coyotes and fox have to move around more there are more rodents for the eagles and hawks. The entire ecosystem is healed in a process called Trophic Cascade.

Tourists and photographers come from all over the world to view the animals in Yellowstone, immensely benefiting local economies. It seems that Rocky Mountain National Park would benefit from the presence of wolves as well. Just throwing this out in hopes that like minded people will join and bring the miracle of wolves to my state. Sure, we might get some argument from the surrounding ranchers but it is my contention that the world does not need those ranchers or their cattle, many of which are living on and spoiling the federal public land experience for others who would also enjoy that land. Perhaps they could learn non lethal wildlife management or just sell some land to create buffer zones between the park and their ranches.

And once again, since the Obama administration caved to the hunting and ranching lobby in Washington, wolves have been unjustly removed from the Endangered Species List. Please go online and donate money, sign petitions, call congressmen, and do whatever it takes to get our beloved wolves (and grizzlies) back on the endangered list. If you don’t know where to find those lists and petitions, please visit my Facebook page dedicated to the preservation of our precious wildlife.

Winter has definitely returned to Colorado with a vengeance this week! We had our coldest night of the entire winter season the other night with the mercury dropping to -4 overnight. Which really isn’t too bad considering two years ago the temp dropped to -24 in Woodland Park and -37 in Divide just a few miles north of here!

Part of the ice festival in Cripple Creek Colorado

But if we were going to have a cold week, this was the one to have it, the week of the annual Ice Festival celebration in Cripple Creek. Unfortunately I was working during the best part of the festival, but at least I got to see it. I was tempted to take the camera down and get some shots, but after fighting the crowds last year I decided against it. Not a fan of random crowd shots anyway.

However one benefit of the cold weather is that the ice sculptures have not yet melted. Today on my walk to work before first light I discovered that the street is still blocked off and the lights are still illuminating the sculptures. I didn’t have my good camera so these with my phone camera are not the best, but it was kind of magical to be there when there were no other people around 🙂 So I just walked up the street and snapped some shots as best as I could in the dark with my extremely unimpressive phone camera.

Ice sculptures and holiday lights on the casinos in Cripple Creek Colorado

These two were my favorites, my favorite one being the castle. Oh, the town keeps the holiday lights up until after the ice festival, so I got a two-fer for my efforts. Hope you enjoy the pictures and maybe you can make it down to Cripple Creek next year!

These shots are not of sufficient quality to put on my website, but please be sure to visit if you want to see more Cripple Creek, mountains, wildlife, sports and and nature photographic art!

S.W. Krull Imaging is pleased to announce a major restructuring in royalty free licensing prices. While the prices on many products continues to rise, prices on royalty free stock imagery continues to fight for a bottom with the big players leading the charge to the bottom. As a result I have determined that my pricing on royalty free images was no longer competitive and have hopefully created a new more competitive pricing structure. Rights managed images will retain the previous premium price structure.

Beautiful doe mule deer

S.W. Krull Imaging has a large collection of royalty free images, including mountain landscapes, sunsets and silhouettes, wildlife and more. If you are in the market for commercially licensed images for your advertising needs I hope you will take the time to browse my images. I am confident there is something there for everyone in the outdoor sports and nature industries!

S.W. Krull Imaging also offers a wide range of art products with the images in my galleries including wall art on glossy metal and acrylic sheets, wrapped canvas and traditional frames plus tons of cool household and gift items!

Not such a successful couple of days shooting, if you want to count keepers. Yesterday there was a beautiful sunrise lighting the Sangre de Cristo mountain range and I was able to get a few shots of it before the light changed… Unfortunately none of them turned out. It was a difficult situation with the a nearby landscape in front of the more distant mountains. I assumed that the horizon was far enough away for the lens to focus on infinity, making both the foreground and the mountains both sharply in focus, but I was wrong. Usually that works, but in this case there was just too much distance between the two landscapes and the foreground details were simply too close. The foreground would have disappeared nicely into silhouette and the distant mountains would have been sharp, if I had chosen more accurately. I should have tried both, but apparently I thought I had nailed it. Oh well, live and learn, with emphasis on learning!

Sunrise and Fog on the Sangre

On the other hand maybe any photo batch that has one keeper could be considered a success. I was luckier this morning, I made the same mistake but in this case the distant mountains were shrouded in clouds and fog and the lack of sharpness there didn’t adversely affect the image 🙂 So, lesson learned and one keeper to show for it.

The day has devolved into a cloudy windy snowy day, perfect for staying inside snuggled up on the couch buried in puppies. As always, this image and more are available for purchase from my image gallery both as wall art and commercial stock. Hope you will stop in and have a look! New images include beautiful lighting on the south face of Pikes Peak, some mountain landscapes of the Sangre and some shots of elk and deer to round it out!

That a young man would carry a rifle into a school and gun down his classmates should come as no surprise to anyone living in this century. We live in a culture that celebrates disrespect, violence and cruelty. Unfortunately we are once again witness to the end result of this culture of cruelty with yet another school shooting.

One of the common threads in the many modern trails of death is an early start in a life of violence with cruelty to animals. We read that Nikolas Cruz entertained himself by shooting squirrels with BB guns, and trying to kill or maim rabbits by ramming a stick down holes where he knew rabbits were nesting. Unfortunately there are few protections for wildlife. If his early fascination with animal cruelty had involved cats or dogs, perhaps he might have been flagged sooner as a mentally deranged individual in need of counseling or incarceration.

Which of course begs the question… what makes people who have fun hurting wildlife better than people who enjoy hurting cats and dogs? Wildlife feel pain and are intelligent sentient beings just as domestic animals are, yet there are entire industries developed around the maiming and killing of wild animals. Every day I see pictures of some fool proudly grinning for the camera while some poor creature has spent hours, maybe even days, pacing around a blood soaked perimeter in terror because it is legal to set snares for predators. Why should we believe the person who does this is any more sane than the one who sets kittens on fire for the fun of it? Both are enjoying the suffering of a helpless animal, yet one is locked up for animal cruelty while the other is celebrated and may even get his own cable TV show one day. We are pretty sure the crimes of the one are going to escalate into worse acts of violence, yet how are we so sure that the one who tortures wildlife won’t graduate into worse violence?

It all boils down to one thing, there are too many in our time who do not understand the difference between right and wrong. And the problem is not limited to the minuscule numbers who commit the school murders, evil is pervasive in all segments of society from children in schools to the highest echelons in our government. Those in charge pass and defend laws that make it legal for hunters to send hounds in to tear coyotes to pieces and be torn to pieces by wolves while at the same time banning dog fighting. And they even have the gall to force the taxpayers to cover the financial losses if the so called hunter’s dogs are killed. We have leaders of entire popular movements jumping up and down and screaming about gun control while at the same time advocating for the right to stab a baby in the head on his or her way out of the birth canal, hypocrites.

In these modern progressive times, those who are qualified to teach right from wrong are mocked and shouted down, kicked out of office or sued for their faith which is ridiculed on popular television shows by the revered talking heads who are devoid of any wisdom or understanding. God, right and wrong, the Ten Commandments and prayer are banned from the schools while our children are taught to decide for themselves the difference between right and wrong. Why should we be surprised when children choose evil over good when evil is celebrated over good in the media or the video games that they are glued to every day of their lives? It’s time for us to get a grip on the evil that is overcoming this nation. It’s time to start rooting out evil where ever it can be found, no matter how high the perch from which it is preached. In order to do so however, we cannot forget the Source of the Good and also the source of the evil.

Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

It’s not every morning I get a visit from a herd of deer but I did today and I had my camera with me 🙂 Right at the beginning of my trek through the woods and up the mountain, there they were. I would never have even seen them if Big Dog wasn’t pointing them out for me, like, “Hey, look some deer!”. They were peering out from the mountain grass and I really couldn’t see them because the sun was in my eyes, which didn’t make for very good pictures, back lit and all. There was not going to be any opportunity to move around and get a better angle, I knew the minute I moved they would be gone so This is the best I could do under the circumstances 😦 It is kind of cool that you can see individual hairs in their fur though and early morning sunlight is nice 🙂

Three doe mule deer in the sun

The sun was much more handy in lighting the Peak though, the south face of America’s Mountain was magnificent today! With just the right light for me to use I was able to set the camera on f11 and use aperture priority to get some really good depth of field. The golden morning sun made for some great color on the beautiful red rocks and the scene was a joy to behold 🙂

Didn’t get to see my elk buddies today, but there was a coyote in the distance carrying on quite a conversation with me and Big Dog. I’m sure he was just telling us we were on his mountain. Been a long time since I’ve seen one of the little wild dogs close up, even longer since I’ve gotten a decent picture! Still, they remind me of my bucket list item to travel up to Yellowstone to photograph the wolf packs that have been nurtured there.

Fresh snow on the south face of Pikes Peak

It’s been a great few days on the mountain but tomorrow it’s back to the rock pile. Saw an article today that says there is spike in the death rate of men at age 62… Something about feeling useless and disengaging from society. Lol… I won’t have a problem I’m sure! Unless the death rate has something to do with falling off mountains because of the increased time spent there? Well who knows, all I know is I can’t wait for these annoying work week interruptions in my otherwise rewarding life to end!

As always, these pictures and more are available on my website for purchase as wall art, cool gift and household items and on the stock portal as commercial stock for all your advertising needs!